Starship Classes
The following is a Guide to the different types of starships in terms of size and power. It can be used as a template for the creation of new Vehicles. Scouts Scouts: Scouts are small, agile, incredibly fast, but lightly armored and have almost no firepower. They are not used typically in combat unless being deployed by a Missile Frigate to go and find the enemy for long range bombardment. Scouts have very limited anti-fighter capability, and most are unmanned. Scouts always weigh less than a ton. Fighters/Bombers Fighters/Bombers: Fighters cannot contain FTL drives or Warp Drives, which make it absolutely necessary to have at least a Frigate. Fighters are generally used in “screens” of mass deployment as a deterrent to larger vessels. Fighters have such variable weight and size that the possibilities are nearly endless, though most weigh from 10 to 15 tons. Most shuttles end up in this category unless they are placed in the Corvette class because of larger loads. There are no Frigates or larger sized shuttles or cargo ships. These ships are typically crewed by an extremely small amount of people if any at all. Corvettes Corvette: Corvettes are small but expensive ships. Formerly Frigates were the smallest ships that could contain FTL however Corvettes replaced this. While Frigates are usually self-sustaining, Corvettes took out the additional factories and farms in exchange for still being FTL capable as well as much faster than the normal frigate. Corvettes serve many roles from those akin to torpedo boats, to scouting ships for long range recon to picket ships to assisting smaller ships like fighters. They are also useful troop carriers and can typically be seen fielded on almost any large scale fleet deployment or patrol group. More commonly corvettes are used in law enforcement to track down smugglers... or by smugglers to evade law enforcement. They are typically crewed by very few people (compared to a frigate's hundreds of crew members minimum) and are also small enough to be purchased commercially. Frigates Frigate: Most Frigates are anywhere between a half to a full kilometer long, and weigh in from ranges of seven hundred to nine hundred tons. Frigates can provide a wide variety of roles on the battlefield, including in-atmosphere fire support, close contact space engagements at only dozens of kilometers, and more commonly to shoot down large masses of enemy fighters/bombers. Cruisers/Carriers Cruisers: Cruisers are heavily armored, though not as much as Dreadnoughts or Capital ships, and have incredibly heavy guns. Typically Cruisers are used to deploy mass amounts of fighters/bombers which gives them a “Carrier” role, but they are used afterwards to engage the enemy at ridiculous ranges as far as several hundreds of light minutes away. Missiles, kinetic slugs, and lasers are almost always found together on Cruisers. Cruisers are expected to be dealing with Frigates and other Cruisers, but have trouble attacking or defending against fighters since Cruisers lack the smaller and faster guns to engage the near light-speed threats unless specifically designed for picketing. Civilian Colony Ships are included in this category. Capitols/Command Ships Capitol Ships: Capitol Ships serve as mobile command posts for massive armies. They are used as a staging platform for ground troops to await their deployment on hostile worlds and also to carry the biggest guns possible into spaceborne warfare. Capitol Ships have a weakness as they are very slow moving and tend to have a wild inertia. Capitol Ships are deadly to all enemy vessels, but are costly to produce and are also not particularly maneuverable; making them ill suited to most engagements outside of a support role or alternatively using their bulk to gorge their hulls on weapons and armor. Mostly, Capitol Ships simply stay away from the fight and either bombard planets from afar, or bombard enemy ships while deploying their ground forces to either board the enemy’s fleet or engage their own ground forces planet side. Stations/Dreadnoughts Dreadnought: There are only two Dreadnoughts existing across all races in the universe. Dreadnoughts are the new Cold War, since only one is needed to destroy a planet with a massive bombardment across the surface which causes an extinction event. Mostly, Dreadnoughts have never seen combat with the exception of two cases such as the A.N.S. Titan and the Immolation, the first being an Alliance vessel and the latter a Hierarchy. The two were involved in the same battle, and slugged out the massive conflict for years and years as smaller ships engaged all around them. Truly kings of space, the only tactic with Dreadnoughts seems to be brute force. However, they are far more unwieldy than Capitol Ships, and most are being scrapped due to their inability to be used effectively in maneuvering through battles. As far as the Alliance and Hierarchy are concerned; these ships serve little purpose on the battlefield anymore and are museum pieces. Category:Guide